Haunted
by Silvered Rae
Summary: She can't heal the scars he left her with. Not on her own, at least. What will she do when his spirit visits her one night when she's alone? Will she be able to accept the past and forgive him, as well as accept his forvgiveness? Contains LO spoilers.


**Disclaimer: I don't own PJO, Rick Riordan does.**

**Note: Set to the song Haunted by Disturbed. Listen to it as you read if you want the full experience.**

**Haunted**

If asked to describe her life, she would say, "Oh, you know. There are the ups, the downs, and then everything in between." It was true enough in a sense, but far from being completely true. She wondered absently if that was possible, if there were varying levels of truth and lies.

In all honesty, there was nothing in her life that could possibly dampen her spirits drastically. There was no fear of death or war-something that she hadn't been able to say for as long as she could remember. She got along with the people she traveled with who were now practically family. She'd come to terms with all the ghosts from her past.

_Not all_, she mentally corrected herself out of habit. _All but one_.

She'd been told that any wound could be healed in given time-physical or emotional. Yet to start healing, you first had to remove the knife or arrow or whatever had struck you from your flesh. Otherwise you'd only heal around it.

She wanted more than anything to be able to pull the knife out. She wanted to let the blood pour, wrap the wound, and let time begin its promised healing. But the knife wasn't hers to pull out. Or if it was, maybe she wasn't ready to let go.

Maybe she wanted it there. It reminded her of someone whose story would be passed down as a hero's, yet she knew they would all forget about him. Or worse, his story would ascend into the rank of myth. Mortal parents would tell his story to their children to teach them that it was never to late to repent. His name would be said along with heroes like Heracles or Jason, the mortals not even suspecting that there was a hint of truth to it.

Living for all eternity, maybe one day she would begin to believe it as well. She'd let his existence fade from her mind, forgetting that their paths had ever been intertwined. She'd remember him as the man from the story, never as Luke Castellan, her former friend.

She'd let the knife stay in her flesh, letting herself heal around it. Maybe one day it would be a part of her, not an alien object embedded in her flesh. Maybe that was the way it was meant to be. She was never supposed to let him go, only move on with his memory always haunting her.

But immortality was a long time. Part of her wanted a life free of him, even if the peace and tranquility of it was all a very thin mirage. This part of her clashed bitterly with the part of her who clung to every memory of Luke she had.

The only thing she longed for with her whole was the knowledge of what to do. She wanted to pick one thing or the other and stick with it for eternity, never once wondering if she'd made the right choice. An immortal life without regret.

She was alone in the woods just a few hundred yards away from where they had stopped for the night, yet the trees provided her with enough privacy to make it feel like she was a hundred miles away from civilization.

She looked up, peering past the tips of the ancient pines. The night sky was beautiful, stars illuminating everything with an unearthly silver light. Had she not been so wrapped up in her internal conflict, she would have found the scenery absolutely breathtaking.

"You look so troubled. And it's such a beautiful night."

With those few words, every muscle in her body tensed, yet her heart started beating as if she had just completed a marathon. She wished she could make it stop. This was probably her desperate mind playing a trick on her, nothing worth getting her hopes up over.

Still-in some vane hope-she looked up from the ground, already bracing herself for the depression she would feel when nothing but a few trees and the possible squirrel awaited her.

But he was there, patiently waiting and looking impossibly real as she tried to contain the shock that rushed through her. There he was, looking just like the Luke she knew, but completely different.

It was impossible to describe. He was the same person she had known him to be. He was the same height and had the same scar. The clothes he wore were exactly what she would expect to see him in, had he still been alive.

Still, as familiar as his appearance was, there was something different about him. Maybe it was how the smile on his lips was truly carefree, or the way he stood like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His brows weren't furrowed like they were when he was thinking carefully about something, which she had known him to do quite frequently.

It was as though someone had taken Luke and filled him with an innocence that was almost childlike. There wasn't any trace of the lost war or his heroic death about him. Like an old soul with a new conscience, she settled on.

"You're...You can't be here," she finally said, deciding to start with the first thing that came to her mind. He was dead. Dead people didn't show up in the woods in the middle of the night to strike up a conversation with the living.

His smile only broadened. "True, but I am."

"But you're dead," she insisted.

He only shrugged in response.

Another prospect occurring to her, she said, "Are you really here? Are you really Luke?"

He frowned for a moment and his blue eyes turned serious. The familiar look of concentration returned to his face "I can't answer that for you. You can believe that I'm really here or that I'm just some trick of your mind."

Irritation crept into her. "And what if I told you that if you didn't give me an answer I'd walk away right now?" After she said it, she realized that there were more important things to say to him, but the need to know if he really was there clouded her judgment.

Luke sighed. "Then you'd walk away and we wouldn't be able to talk," he said as though it was the obvious answer. "And I'd be disappointed and you'd forever wonder what would have happened if you'd stayed."

_Same persuasive way of getting what he wants_, Thalia thought to herself. Some habits really never did die. "Okay, so what is it that you want to talk about?" she said, resting her back against a tree. She'd gone through this scenario a million times. What would she say to Luke if she had the chance? Now, looking opportunity right in the face, she had no clue what she was going to do.

"Did you miss me when I died?" he asked, the serious expression still on his face.

"Did you miss me when I became Artemis' lieutenant?" she retorted, using the one way she knew to deal with all the emotions that were running through her. By blaming him and letting anger control her.

He sighed wearily, a tired look creeping into his face. "Something told me that things were going to go like this."

"Well I guess some things never change," she said, her voice sharper than she intended.

Luke looked at the ground, watching a leaf being blown by the wind with seemingly great interest. "I made a mistake and I fixed it, Thalia."

"You shouldn't have made the mistake to start with," she said stubbornly, refusing to let go of her resurfacing anger. "Then there wouldn't have been anything to fix."

"You can't change the past," he said, and she was aware that he was talking about more than just what had happened with Kronos. It had taken more than one experience to teach him this lesson. "There's no point in feeling guilty over what you did or didn't do after you've done the best you can to fix it."

"So people shouldn't feel any guilt over what they've done wrong?" she said, her voice containing a mix of confusion and anger. Maybe Luke hadn't come as far as she thought he had. Maybe his values had grown even more twisted.

"No. They should try to do better in the future by learning from their mistakes," he said, his voice never containing anything except the patience that one would use when teaching a young child. If only she could be like that as well, instead of letting her temper control her mouth.

She took a few deep breaths and sounded half-civil when she said, "I wish you'd taken your own advice."

There was a trace of regret in his voice when he said, "I wish so too, Thalia. There was a lack of options when I figured it out, and I took the only one that I figured would work."

"You died," she said flatly. "You killed yourself."

"It wasn't as if you needed me."

She wasn't sure if he'd meant for it to hurt her, but it made her feel so many emotions at once. Regret, anger, empathy, even guilt that he was hinting at that she'd been part of the reason he died. If she hadn't joined Artemis, would he have stayed alive? Would she have been enough for him?

As if sensing the whirlwind inside her mind, he quickly added, "Thalia, there wasn't anything you could have done differently. It was my destiny."

She folded her arms across her chest. "We both screwed up, didn't we?" she said, her voice much lighter than her heavy heart.

"Wrong place at the wrong time?" Luke offered, using the same tone of voice she hadn't heard him use since their carefree banter so many years ago. How long had it been? Five? Ten? Regardless, it felt like eternity ago.

A faint smile broke across her serious face. "Wrong parents and the wrong destiny?"

"I suppose we didn't handle it the best either," he said, sounding slightly more somber, reminding her that they were just as responsible as everyone else for what had happened.

"I'm sorry I pushed you off a cliff," she blurted out, caring nothing about tact, feeling better as soon as it was off her chest.

She could swear he laughed lightly at her abruptness. "Well, I'm sorry for poisoning you when you were a tree." His voice was carefree, but she could tell that he felt the same way she did. It was time for them both to face what they'd done, time for them both to come to terms with each other.

"It did lead to my becoming a human again," she said. "My years as a tree definitely weren't the most interesting."

"Everything happens for a reason," Luke said.

As she asked the next question, her voice was completely devoid of emotion. "So why was it that you became a traitor and had to die?"

He frowned. "I've been thinking about that. It's one of the things I think the most about, actually," Luke said slowly. "Someone had to show the gods that they weren't invincible. Something had to lead to them acknowledging their children." Then he added, "And I guess that it was time for Artemis to get a new lieutenant."

"Sucks that we had to give up so much for all of this to happen," she said sourly, his philosophical theory not making her feel better.

He shrugged as though it no longer bothered him, though she doubted that was the case. "Something tells me that there's more to your destiny than just being the girl who had to suffer for all the stupid things I did."

"And you're dead. What's there for you?" she said, refusing to acknowledge that there could be life after Luke.

"Hades offered me a chance at another life. A chance to be better. He offered me a life where there wouldn't be any big destiny for me. It'd be me making up my own fate," he told her, the light in his eyes and the enthusiasm in his voice showing her just how much he wanted it.

"And you said yes," she stated.

What he said next would haunt her for the rest of her life. "Thalia, I wanted to. I wanted to say yes and live another life, completely oblivious to what happened in this one." He sighed, sounding pained. "Thinking about myself is what got me in this mess. I couldn't think about anyone else and what they felt for so long. It was all about me and how I loathed my mom, detested my dad, and had to find some way to show the gods exactly how I felt."

There was silence between them for a few minutes before he finally said, "Thalia, I told him that all I wanted was a few hours with you in the land of the living. Starting a new life would have made me happy, but you...Everything I've done has hurt you. I wanted to do something for you. I wanted you to know that I'm sorry and I don't want you blaming yourself."

"You gave up the chance to be reborn to tell me not to blame myself?"

Luke sighed and ran a hand through his hair, a beautiful silver by the light of the moon. "I knew you wouldn't understand. I've only thought about myself for so long. I want the last thing I do in the world of the living to be something for someone I really cared about."

"So you're really here?"

"Or you just have a very crafty imagination," he said, dodging her question again with the skill that was characteristic to him.

Again there was silence. Their eyes met and she said, "I could die. Then we could be together. Maybe Hades would even let us be reborn together and-" she said as she fingered her tantalizingly sharp knife.

"No!" he interrupted, the firmness of his voice startling her. "Thalia, you're not going to do that. You're going to live for a long time. I don't want you to die just so we'd be together." It was almost as if he was saying it for the both of them. She knew that he wanted that possibility just as much as she did.

"It's not your choice to make," Thalia said.

He looked longingly up at the stars, perhaps savoring their beauty for the last time. "I did something for you. Now I want you to do something for me. Thalia, don't give this up. Don't make me regret giving up my chance at life."

"And one day if I die in battle?"

"We cross that _unexpected_ bridge when we get to it," he said, putting emphasis on _unexpected_. He knew that she'd throw her life away in battle if she was desperate enough.

"So I go on living my life and you just hang out in the Underworld?"

"I don't mind waiting. And there are plenty of people to talk to." He smiled at her. "It's not actually so bad. A welcome change from a life of turmoil."

She wasn't ready to let go of the fact that he'd given up another life for her. "But not as nice as it is here, I'd bet."

"Which is why you shouldn't go throwing it away for me. I don't deserve it," he said, turning her complaint into an argument against her. Just another one of his many talents, she remembered.

"I'm not sure if I like it when you're so selfless," she grumbled.

He didn't appear to hear her. His gaze was trained on the sky, or more specifically the moon. "I have to go soon," he said regretfully. Already she could see his form fade, and his voice was becoming more of a whisper in the wind.

"Will you miss me?" she said, feeling an almost desperate need for reassurance.

Luke smiled gently, something she hadn't seen for so long. "Of course I'm going to miss you. I've always missed you. Everything I did in life took me farther away from the one thing I wanted to be close to."

There were a million things she wanted to tell him. Yet in the moment, they all abandoned her. "We'll be back together one day," she stated firmly. "One day when I've had my fill of life and you've gone crazy waiting for me."

There were three little words she knew that were on both of their minds. _I love you. _As she thought about saying it, the words became lodged in her throat. She looked up and met his eyes. In that moment, she knew that it didn't need to be stated. They knew that they loved each other. Saying it out loud would be like stating that the world was round, or that the sun would rise in the morning. It was obvious. No vocal acknowledgement was needed.

He reached his hand out to her. She stepped forward, seeing his lips move but not hearing any sound. She knew that it was time for him to leave. Her hand touched his cold one for a second, proving that he really was there. Yet no more than a moment had passed and her hand fell through empty air.

Luke Castellan was gone.

She didn't feel guiltless, and she definitely felt far from perfect. No one ever did after they had a knife taken out of their flesh. Luke had done it. She was free to feel the pain and then heal. His act of selflessness had made it possible for her to continue living.

She felt guilt over the fact that he'd given up a new life for her. She probably would until the day she died. He wanted her to live, and since she owed him, she would. She would undoubtedly die one day in battle, be it in a few weeks or a few centuries. Then she would be with him.

"Thanks, Luke," she said and turned to head back to Artemis and all the Hunters. She wouldn't tell any of them about Luke, even though they were her family for now. It was her secret.

Death would one day find her. Despite what Luke would say, it was rapidly becoming something she eagerly awaited. Every battle she would wonder if perhaps this was the one she would finally be with the one person who made her complete.

Her Luke Castellan.

**Author's Note: Had to get that out of my system after there wasn't any Thuke in LO...I really don't think this is very good, so CC is welcome! **


End file.
